SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES T.G<^ 



of the enlightened philosophy and contributed in succeeding generations 

 towards concealing its services in the political and the social sphere; the 

 philosophers of enlightenment have striven unceasingly for humanity and 

 tolerance in the life of the State, and in that respect their activities have 

 left a deep impression on the social life of our own day. Parallel with the 

 philosophy of enlightenment, however, there developed another, entirely 

 contrasted, conception of nature, the precursors of which had been Paracel- 

 sus and van Helmont, and which, possessing in Stahl, Swedenborg, and 

 Caspar Friedrich Wolff its scientifically most important representatives, 

 appears throughout the eighteenth century under various forms; a view of 

 life which sees in natural phenomena an expression for the operations of 

 spiritual powers, whereas, according to its tenets, the mechanical explana- 

 tion of nature admits of only a superficial observation of what takes place, 

 without any insight into that inherent connexion in existence which the 

 spiritual powers imply. This attempt to regard nature as a living entity, to 

 look for connexions in phenomena where, when viewed superficially, none 

 are apparent, has constituted this tendency's greatest service, besides which 

 the freedom of mechanical principles, in many cases, admitted of greater 

 liberty in the interpretation of special phenomena, as Wolff's embryological 

 and Sprengel's botanical investigations proved. The weakness of this spirit- 

 ualistic view of nature has lain in the frequent desire to solve by mystical 

 formulas problems the solution of which would have required observation 

 and deep thought, and, generally speaking, in its tendency to degenerate 

 into meaningless phrases. As, moreover, this natural mysticism was asso- 

 ciated with moral and religious speculations and was upheld by specially 

 founded mystic communities, there was thereby created that extremely un- 

 sound "secret wisdom" that under various names and forms spread with 

 incredible rapidity at the close of the eighteenth century, in spite of protests 

 and ridicule on the part of the adherents of enlightenment. 



Kant and his -philosophy 

 Besides these two directions of thought, which offered, at least in their 

 more extreme forms, but slender possibilities for the further advancement 

 of science, there appears towards the close of the eighteenth century a new 

 system of thought which really gave the scientific activities of the next 

 century their peculiar character — namely, critical philosophy. Its founder 

 was Emmanuel Kant (1714-1804), whose life's work has undoubtedly rep- 

 resented the greatest contribution to the history of human thought since 

 Socrates and Plato, and for this reason his work merits attention even as 

 concerning the history of biology. Kant was born, lived, and died at Konigs- 

 berg, in Prussia, where he was professor of philosophy and applied himself 

 entirely to his work as a thinker and teacher. In his youth he had studied, 

 besides philosophy, certain exact sciences, chiefly physics and mathematics, 



